Each year, over 600,000 formerly incarcerated individuals are released from prison back into their communities (BJS, 2014a; Carson, 2018), with staggeringly high recidivism rates. As many as two-thirds will recidivate within three years (Alper & Durose, 2018; Antenangeli & Durose, 2021; BJS, 2014b), 79 percent within six years (Alper & Durose, 2018), and 82 percent within 10 years of release (Atenangeli & Durose, 2021). These numbers suggest they are not adequately prepared for return to the community post-prison. As evidence suggests that simply warehousing individuals in prison with little to no access to effective programming is unlikely to result in reductions in one’s likelihood of recidivating (Duwe & Clark, 2017), it is important to understand how individuals can best use their time during incarceration to prepare themselves for successful reentry. Education is one of a number of factors that impacts one’s likelihood of recidivism (Latessa et al., 2014), and in recent years there has been a significant push to increase availability and access of college courses for individuals incarcerated in prisons across the United States. Notably, this effort has been nonpartisan and supported by both sides of the political aisle, suggesting a willingness to try something new to address crime in the U.S. As education, especially postsecondary, has been found to be associated with reduced likelihood of recidivism (Gaes, 2008) and studies have found it to have potentially significant cost savings effects (Davis et al., 2013), its expansion in U.S. prisons has the potential for widespread impacts. However, relatively little is known about the experience of participating in higher education in prison. The dissertation aims to address this gap in our understanding of the experience of higher education in prison (HEP) and its theoretical and practical implications. Using semi-structured, qualitative interviews with formerly incarcerated individuals (N = 31; 20 men, 11 women) who participated in some form of college education while incarcerated, this dissertation aimed to provide a better understanding of: 1) the motivations for participating in higher education in prison, 2) the barriers toward participation in or successful completion of those courses, and 3) the impacts of such participation. Finally, this dissertation uses Sampson and Laub’s (1993) age-graded theory of informal social control and Giordano and colleagues’ (2002) theory of cognitive transformation as the main framework to interpret these findings and illustrate how postsecondary prison education can serve as a turning point for desistance from crime.
Read
